Rule reiteration: the Jezebel rule

I made a decision a wee while ago to just unfollow anyone on Twitter who retweeted anything from Jezebel (in a non-criticising way)

Then, the supporting evidence was Jezebel’s appropriation of the term “hipster racism”, coined at Racialicious in 2006. Jezebel, being the awesome right-on feminist online magazine that it is, saw no problem in publishing the work of a white woman (Lindy West) casually borrowing the work of a woman of colour, Carmen Van Kerckhove, without so much as a “props to Carmen for the great neologism!”

Prior to that of course there was that whole “let’s publish an article by some guy the editors know about how cool French chicks are about being constantly sexually harassed, unlike you uptight American bitches” thing.

Exploitation is different if you’re doing it for great pageviews justice, obviously.

The arguments when people attack Jezebel or xojane are usually of the “but not all the stuff they publish is horrific, exploitative/oppressive linkbait!” variety. And I do get that a lot of good writers – especially a lot of the good fat acceptance writers since Shapely Prose shut down – are writing on those sites.

But I, personally, just do not have the time or patience or tolerance for that shit to support even the good pieces. It’s all tainted by continual, massive fuckups which can only be remedied with firing people, buying a new domain name and starting over.